Abstract
During the operation of radio-chemical plants, low and intermediate level alkaline waste streams containing nitrates is generated. Some of these waste streams contain large concentrations of nitrates exceeding 100,000 ppm and is of highly alkaline nature. To remediate such wastes, a two stage denitration process was developed—with chemical denitration as the first stage, followed by biological denitrification. The chemical denitration process was developed using catalytic reduction technique for destructing the nitrates and converting them to harmless nitrogen gas using a suitable reductant, in the presence of bimetallic Pd-Cu catalysts. The reductant used was formalin (37–41 % formaldehyde) for the experimental work and different reaction parameters were determined to yield a higher reduction. For studies at laboratory scale, approx. 97 % nitrate reduction of synthetic waste prepared using sodium nitrate was achieved in 5 h and denitration of simulated waste resulted in nitrate reduction of approx. 96 % in 6 h and the final nitrate concentration was near 5000 ppm for both cases. According to Indian standards, the maximum permissible limit of nitrate in water is set at 100 ppm and since the reduced concentration doesn’t match the environmentally safe limits, the biological denitrification process was used for further reduction. Biological process was developed for treating effluent containing approx. 5000 ppm of nitrate, formic acid and unreacted formaldehyde, traces of catalyst and NaOH. The bacteria used were denitrifying bacteria. A continuous anaerobic packed bed reactor was used for denitration process.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Berndt, H., Monnich, I., Lucke, B., Menzel, M.: Tin promoted palladium catalyst for nitrate removal from drinking water. Appl. Catal. B. Environ. 30, 111–122 (2001)
Canter, L.W.: Nitrates in Groundwater. CRC Press, Boca Raston (1996)
Glass, C., Silverstein, J.: Denitrification of high nitrate, high salinity wastewater. Water Res. 33, 223–229 (1999)
Hirano, M., Kato, T., Mihara, S., Ito, H.: Method of treating waste water containing nitrate-nitrogen. European Patent Application, Patent No. EP 1826184 A1, 1–12 (2006)
Karanasios, K.A., Vasiliadou, I.A., Pavlou, S., Vayenas, D.V.: Hydrogenotrophic denitrification of potable water: a review. J. Hazard. Mater. 180, 20–37 (2010)
Lee, O.M., Oh, J.H., Libert, M., Hwang, D.S., Choi, Y.D., Park, J.H., Chung, U.S., Jo, B.K., Kim, M.J., Lee, S.J.: Bio-denitrification of the nitrate waste solution from the lagoon sludge in a continuous bio-reduction process. Korean J. Chem. Eng. 25, 787–792 (2008)
Mousavi, S.A.R., Ibrahim, S., Aroua, M.K., Ghafari, S.: Bio-electrochemical denitrification—a review. Int. J. Chem. Environ. Eng. 2(2), 140–146 (2011)
Naik, S.S., Setty, Y.P.: Effect of carbon sources on biological denitrification of wastewater by immobilized Pseudomonas stutzeri bacteria in a fluidized bed bio reactor (FBBR). In: 2nd International Conference on Chemical Engineering and Applications IPCBEE, vol. 23, 114–118 (2011)
Naik, S.S., Setty, Y.P.: Biological denitrification of wastewater—a mini review on carbon source. In: International Conference on Chemical, Environmental Science and Engineering (ICEEBS’2012), Pattaya (Thailand) (2012)
Pintar, A.: Catalytic processes for the purification of drinking water and industrial effluents. Catal. Today 77, 451–465 (2003)
Prüsse, U., Vorlop, K.D.: Supported bimetallic palladium catalysts for water-phase nitrate reduction. J. Mol. Catal. A Chem. 173, 313–328 (2001)
Salome, O., Soares, G.P., Orfao, J.J.M., Pereira, M.F.R.: Bimetallic catalysts supported on activated carbon for the nitrate reduction in water: optimization of catalysts composition. Appl. Catal. B Environ. 91, 441–448 (2009)
Sandhya, U., Banerjee, D., Singh, I.J., Wattal, P.K.: Denitrification of high sodium nitrate bearing effluents using flow through bioreactor. Desalin. Water Treat. 38, 52–58 (2012)
Xie, Y., Cao, H., Li, Y., Zhang, Y., Crittenden, J.: Highly selective Pd-Cu/amorphous silica-alumina (ASA) catalyst for groundwater denitration. Environ. Sci. Technol. 45, 4066–4072 (2011)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this paper
Cite this paper
Titre, S., Jakhete, A., Sahu, A., Vincent, T., Bari, M.L., Goswami, A.K. (2017). Denitration of High Nitrate Bearing Alkaline Waste Using Two Stage Chemical and Biological Process. In: Mohan B., R., Srinikethan, G., Meikap, B. (eds) Materials, Energy and Environment Engineering. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2675-1_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2675-1_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-10-2674-4
Online ISBN: 978-981-10-2675-1
eBook Packages: Chemistry and Materials ScienceChemistry and Material Science (R0)